The Secret World third beta weekend starts this Friday

Funcom announced that they?ll invite thousands of gamers from all over the world into the bowels of hell itself, in the third Beta Weekend for the company?s highly anticipated modern-day MMORPG The Secret World. Starting on June 15th at 9am PDT and ending on June 17th at 11.59pm PDT, gamers will be able to explore a wealth of new content that was not available in the two previous Beta Weekends, including the Dragon and Illuminati starter experiences.

Whereas players in previous Beta Weekends got to sample only the Templar starter experience and the troubled town of Kingsmouth, this weekend the game will be opened up to include the massive region known as The Savage Coast, as well as two epic dungeons: The Polaris and Hell Rising. This represents only a fraction of the content available at launch, but still spans over dozens upon dozens of hours of pure gameplay. The best way to gain access to the Beta Weekend is to pre-order The Secret World. This grants access to all Beta Weekends leading up to launch. Funcom is also teaming up with major partners all over the world this week, including world-leading hardware manufacturer NVIDIA, to conduct a massive giveaway of keys that will enable play for this weekend only.

Funcom is also excited to share that over 1.3 million gamers are now registered as potential beta testers for The Secret World, shattering all previous company records including that of its previous MMO Age of Conan. The company is regularly inviting more and more from this pool of people into the ongoing and very successful Closed Beta. A recent survey among the tens of thousands of testers, who have played in the Closed Beta, confirms that the vast majority is enjoying the game and will play it at launch.

Funcom CEO Trond Arne Aas said: ?We are very encouraged by both the numbers of beta registrations and the positive feedback we are getting from our testers. The fact that so many gamers want to play ?The Secret World? combined with the high purchase intent among testers is something we consider a very positive indicator.?

The company can also share today that The Secret World has now gone GOLD, and that production of physical units have started and that these will soon be rolled out to retail in preparation of launch on July 3rd. For those who have pre-ordered, early access will commence on June 29th as planned.